


(in)Human

by sparrowshellcat



Category: Fantastic Four (2015)
Genre: M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 17:36:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4634205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowshellcat/pseuds/sparrowshellcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU, they didn't stop Victor from destroying Earth. </p><p>The light is alive. Reed wondered how they never considered that World Zero could have had life on it, before. "When your world is gone and I am all you have left, you will see."</p>
            </blockquote>





	(in)Human

**Author's Note:**

> Victor/Reed and Ben/Reed, if you squint. MPREG, technically. 
> 
> Fantastic Four and the associated characters are the property of their respective owners, used without permission but with great admiration and respect.

_When your world is gone and I am all you have left, you will see._

 

\---

 

Victor wasn’t trying to kill them.

Reed struggled with his noodles of arms, crying out in pain as he struggled to get his limbs to cooperate with him, to listen to his commands, but the green energy that Victor had flung at him, whatever it was, it was still coursing through his veins, keeping him from doing what he _needed_ to do. He had to _stop_ Victor, he was going to destroy the world. He had been back on Earth for maybe a couple hours, and that was apparently all it had taken to throw the young man he'd once thought of as a friend into a murderous rage. Destroy the Earth, kill everyone on the planet, that wasn't going to have any serious consequences down the line, or anything, right?

He wasn't watching Reed anymore, Victor's eyes were on the gate that he had constructed, the blue light rendering everything that had once been _Earth_ into nothing more than energy. Reed had to stop him. Had to _stop_ him.

But Victor wasn't trying to kill them.

His limbs were still kitten weak and stretched beyond his control, but Reed was able to heavily twist his head, was able to see his friends - Johnny encased in a layer of what looked like volcanic rock, keeping him trapped inside, but not smothering the flames that had become what he was, now. Ben was encased in rocks, like he had been, when they had first been flung from Zero back to Earth, and he was calling, desperately, for Reed. But he wasn't _harmed_. Even Sue, she who could always elicit the strongest reactions from their old friend, she was just trapped in one of her shields, encased in rock.

Reed hoped she'd thought to drop the barrier inside the rock sphere, itself. She couldn't hold her breath forever.

Victor wasn't trying to kill them.

 _Them_.

But he was trying to kill every other living person that had ever walked the Earth, and he had killed _Dr. Storm_ , and - and why wasn't he trying to kill _them_? Hadn't they been the ones to leave him behind? Every comic book Reed had ever read - and he hadn't read many, that was really more Ben's thing, but he'd picked up a few here and there, he got the gist of the idea - suggested that Victor should want nothing more than for cartoonish violence and revenge against the three of them, for being the ones that left him _behind_ on Zero, but Victor... wasn't.

Still, he couldn't let him continue what he was doing, attempts to kill Reed and his compatriots or no, and he struggled, slowly, to his feet. His limbs still felt too long, gangly and bending in ways that bones had never been designed to bend. His knees didn't seem to be able to hold his weight, but that was okay, because his thighs could, and they bent like he had an extra knee, suddenly, until he was able to throw himself forward.

Victor didn't see him coming, so he stumbled forward - but that didn't stop him from reaching out and catching Reed by the throat, stilling him in his tracks.

"I don't want to kill you," Victor said, eyes glowing green. Any trace of the brown that Reed thought he knew before seemed to be gone.

"Then _stop_ this," Reed ground out, voice a rough hasp.

"I don't want to kill _you_ ," he said again, but Reed swore that the intonation was different, this time, like the words meant different things than they had just seconds before, then Victor's eyes flared even brighter green, and Reed felt that energy, the same as before, snaking through his whole body.

He lost consciousness.

 

\---

 

Reed woke in a cave.

He assumed it had to have an entrance, because otherwise he had no idea how he could have possibly gotten inside, but there didn't seem to be light coming from one, so he wasn't sure he dared trying to see if he could find it.

There _was_ light, a soft green glow that reminded him, oddly, of Christmas. It was coming from a crack in the ceiling, the same sort of crack that they had seen on the surface of Zero when they had first arrived. The same sort of crack that Victor had slid his hand into. The same sort of crack that had started all of this. He glowered up at it, for a few long minutes, but when that didn't seem to inspire the crack to do anything other than remain exactly where it was and continue to emit a soft green glow that lit the space he was in, he gave up on the glaring and just pushed himself slowly to his feet.

Unsteady, he walked a circle around the edge of the cave, discovering with a sinking heart that he'd been wrong about an entrance. The cave was vaguely circular, though there were occasional jogs off of the sphere that served just to make his heart jump with hope, then sink when he realized that they were all just dead ends. Little pockets in the stone.

The lack of entrance bothered him, until he rationalized that he had managed to create instantaneous teleportation. Why couldn't he have been moved into a space with no entrance the same way?

Sighing to himself, Reed thumped down in about the same spot he'd woken up.

"Hello?" He called, hopefully. Maybe the others were nearby. In Area 57, he had heard Ben through the air vents, maybe there was a crack in the stone through which he was getting his air, _maybe_...

"Hello?!" Reed hollered again, louder. "Is anyone out there?"

If anyone was, they didn't answer.

He curled onto his side, and dust rose from his shuddering breaths.

He wondered if Ben was okay.

 

\---

 

When Reed woke next, it was to a faint rumbling in his stomach, a dry throat, and the realization that he had to go to the washroom.

Another circuit around the edge of the cave revealed nothing new, and he was still strapped into the stretchable environment suit that the Army assholes had jury rigged up for him - neater and more professional looking than his own, certainly, but he didn't think it was otherwise any superior - and these things were murder to get out of. He could wait.

Reed settled back down at his little spot, a nook between two rocks, rounded and worn like they'd been washed by water for centuries.

Did the green crack in the ceiling look larger?

 

\---

 

The next time he woke, it was to his bladder informing him, in no uncertain terms, that it didn't _care_ how difficult his environment suit was to get out of, if he didn't, he was going to piss it.

It took Reed probably another ten minutes of struggling with the zipper in the back before he finally managed to jerk it down, and push the rubbery suit down to his upper thighs. He relieved himself in a corner, one of those dead ends that he'd ruled out as an entrance, urine darkening the sand for only a few moments before it seemed to be absorbed into the ground. He'd have been interested to investigate the properties of the sand, if only he'd had access to a lab and even the most basic of equipment.

Instead, all Reed had access to was his environment suit, which he squirmed back into, struggling with the zipper. It occurred to him, around about the time he was cursing that it would be much easier if he could only reach his own back, that this shouldn't be nearly as difficult as he was making it be. Within seconds, his extra-long arm just did the zipper back up, and he flopped back to the ground with a groan.

A year he had spent perfecting his strange new abilities, and it had taken only a few hours on an alien planet to forget all of it.

"Idiot," he muttered to himself, looking up at the ceiling.

The green crack was absolutely larger, wider, which would explain why it was brighter in here than it used to be. He had thought that had been a trick of the eye. It was spreading down the wall behind him, actually, and Reed reached up towards it.

He stopped his fingers just short of pressing into the green surface, he had learned his lesson from Victor's mistakes. The last thing he needed, trapped in a cave without an entrance, was for the cave to be in the middle of a seismic eruption. Still, even just inches away from the surface, Reed swore he could _feel_ it, like static electricity when you got your fingers too close to one of those old glass televisions. The kind that Ben used to get all the time, in the junkyard, and they would plug in just to see what happened. Sometimes the televisions worked. Sometimes they exploded in a lightshow shower of sparks, and that was probably actually more fun than old working sets.

"What _is_ it?" He murmured, dropping his hand to his stomach.

He wished Ben was here.

He could have asked him what he thought it was.

 

\---

 

His hand was buried inside the crack when he woke up, next.

Reed had blinked his bleary eyes open, slowly, trying to figure out why he felt like his whole body was covered in pins and needles. It wasn't a bad sensation, just an odd one, and he couldn't figure out why for the life of him, until he rolled his head to the side, and realized that the crack had spread its way right onto the floor, and his left hand was deep within in, past the wrist.

"No!" He shouted, trying to jerk his hand out, but it wouldn't budge.

It didn't feel like his hand was trapped in it, like it had gotten into a space too narrow, instead it felt like someone had their fingers laced through his, holding his hand, and that person's fingers tightened to hold him in place.

Reed was shrieking and howling as he outright gripped his own wrist and tried to wrench his hand free, as though his desperation would somehow make it easier for his hand to get released. It didn't help, nor did his desperate gasping for air nor his impassioned pleas to the universe itself if only it would let his hand go. The cave wasn't exploding around him, which had to mean that he wasn't triggering seismic activity by touching it, but that didn't stop him from panicking. He could only think of what had happened to Victor, the environmental suit fusing to his skin, making him into - into _Doom_.

Finally, though, Reed's energy failed him.

He hadn't eaten in he didn't know how long, now, he had essentially been sleeping away the hours. It could have been hours, it could have been days, he had no way of telling time down here, and unlike Sue, he didn't have a mind that let him keep almost unerring track of time.

Reed slumped down to the rock floor, panting for breath, arms sore from struggling against the green light. It was like glue, just wet enough to be viscous.

Eyes half lidded, he finally whispered, in a last ditch attempt at freedom, "Please. Let me go."

The inhuman hold on his hand suddenly lightened, and not quite daring to believe it was true, Reed slowly drew his hand free.

With a soft _squelch_ , his hand came free of the glowing green.

His hand looked exactly the same as it always had, to his incredulous eyes, and the crack didn't seem to be growing in angry response, or anything. He was _fine_.

"Oh." Reed whispered. "It's _intelligent_."

The green light seemed to pulse just slightly.

 

\---

 

The next time that Reed woke with his hand buried deep into one of the cracks - and definitely could remember _not_ having put his hand in there, to begin with - he just took a deep breath, and murmured, "I'm sorry, but can I have my hand back?"

This time, he didn't even have to pull, it was as though his hand was very gently pushed out of the green light, and he curled it back to his chest.

"Thank you," he whispered, watching the light for a reaction.

It pulsed again, just a little.

It made so much sense, he realized, as he considered the light. When they had first arrived on Zero, young stupid kids, they had never really considered the possibility that there was _life_ here, life that wasn't human. Life, he admitted to himself, that wasn't organic.

But Victor had survived a _year_ here, by himself, even after he'd been wrenched out of Reed's grip and fallen fully into the green light. Clearly, this light - this _lifeform_ \- had been what had kept him alive.

 How, he didn't know.

Reed didn't want to crawl into the glowing crack to find out.

Instead, he pushed himself to his feet again, and scooping up a rock that looked pretty sharp, he began to scratch his theories into the stone walls of the cave.

 

\---

 

Reed couldn't remember the last time he had been hungry. Or thirsty.

The only biological function he could seem to remember was sleep, and that was probably because he seemed to be sleeping his life away. Hard not to, really, when the only other option seemed to be crushing loneliness.

And boredom.

Every inch of cave space that he could reach - that is, every single inch - had been covered in equations and diagrams, carved into the soft and crumbling rock surface with a sharp stone. He'd designed another teleporter, this one probably more realistically viable, much more compact, but of course impossible to build here in this cave with only stone shrapnel to work with.

And, of course, the green light.

It had grown. The crack had widened, though fortunately quite a bit before Reed had reached the floor in his search for more workspace, because he would have been displeased if his work had been annihilated in its spread.

Still, the crack was there, wide and long, like a bathtub sunken into the floor, full of ever shifting, ever changing green liquid light.

For the last few times that Reed could remember waking up, he had woken up inside of it.

He went to sleep in his usual spot each time he did, curled between the two stones, sheltered even if just in his own imagination.

But when he woke, he was inside the crack, head pillowed on light that should never be solid, soft little waves lapping at his jaw. Once, he had even woken up under the surface of the light itself, surrounded completely and apparently unphased in his sleep by his inability to breathe.

He'd stopped fighting.

Logically, Reed told himself, the green light was the reason he wasn't hungry, wasn't thirsty, didn't need to be finding places to relieve himself in this cave. It was intelligent, he had proven that to himself, especially when he found that the light could do so much more than respond to his demands.

It spoke.

Not in words, not in anything he could ever hope to understand. But the light wasn't silent, it hummed softly around him, and when he listened very closely, he could hear the underlying rhythm of it, a soft lulling of what seemed like almost a heartbeat, to him.

Reed wished he could ask Sue what the pattern meant.

 

\---

 

Reed was laying on his stomach, head pillowed on his crossed arms, when the first crack formed in his skin.

On his forearm, top side, just below his elbow. The skin had been red and sort of itchy there for a while, and it had actually been part of the reason that Reed had considered putting his environmental suit back on. Maybe it was a reaction to contaminations in the air. Contamination in the green light that he woke immersed in every morning.

He'd scratched at it, but he hadn't expected the skin to actually just crack open.

There was no blood. Instead, shining softly from within, his insides were just green light.

He panicked.

Reed screamed, flailed, kicked at the walls, at the crack in the floor and in the wall and in the ceiling, flung rocks into the light, which just roiled and bubbled at him for a moment before it returned to normal. He begged the crack to take it back, to make him normal, _please_ , but nothing changed.

As he finally lay curled in a ball on the floor, back arched towards the ceiling, head tucked in behind his arms like he was trying to imitate a turtle in its shell, he watched with wretched sobbing breaths as a crack spread down from his collarbone and across his chest.

 

\---

 

When Reed opened his eyes again, the crack was empty.

There was no softly glowing green light shifting around or beside him, even though he lay in the empty space where it had been, cradled by soft yellow stone.

He could still see it, though, even when his eyes were closed, shifting behind his eyes, moving through his body.

He wondered how much he looked like Victor, and was grateful that at least he hadn't been wearing his environmental suit anymore when the light became a part of him.

 

\---

 

The light was alive. It wasn't a parasite, which he had thought at first, when it had started to take over his body. It was a symbiote, and they were living in harmony now, man and light.

The light was keeping him alive far longer than any human could have survived buried inside an alien planet like Zero - or even inside the old human Earth. He provided means for it to get out of the ground, to explore, to _see_.

The light could hear him, he realized finally, as he considered his equations, which had spilled down into the cracks of where the light used to be. But it couldn't see him, not until it had access to his eyes.

Humans were strange, to the light. He didn't know how he _knew_ that, but accepted that maybe he was so linked that the lifeform that had slipped into his body could maybe transmit its thoughts through their body. When Victor had fallen into the maelstrom of light that had been assailing them, a year ago, he must have seemed so very strange. But the light had saved him, instead of rejecting him.

It would have been well within the light's right to destroy Victor, Reed admitted. _They_ were the invaders.

With the light pulsing dully under his skin, though, Reed also knew that the light hadn't slipped inside himself just because it could, or because it had been seeking a symbiotic relationship all along.

Victor had told it to.

He just - Reed didn't know why.

 

\---

 

"I need your help."

Reed forced his eyes open, not sure that he was going to like what he saw.

When his suspicions were confirmed, and it was Victor sitting on the floor beside him, legs folded, hands resting on his knees, he decided that no, he didn't think he liked what he was seeing.

"What do you want?" Reed grumbled, rolling onto his back, pushing his hands through his hair.

"Your help."

He sighed, and rolled his head heavily over to look at Victor again. He looked like he had, the night that he had killed Dr. Storm, the night that he had destroyed the only planet that Reed had ever lived on. Like his body was more metal and plastic than human, the surfaces cracked and broken, green light spilling out from underneath. On Victor, the cracks looked like fissures in a rock surface. On Reed, he thought, they looked like scars, healed wrong. "Why would I help you?"

Victor tilted his head to the side, considering him. His eyes glowed only slightly, now, almost brown again. When he spoke, though, his face didn't move, though the sounds still issued from the grill over his mouth. "I gave you life, Reed."

"You mean with this... lifeform." Reed motioned at himself, not even caring that he was naked. The scars of green light were everywhere. Victor had seen to that. "The symbiote."

He nodded.

"Why?" Reed asked, shaking his head. "I don't understand."

"I didn't want to kill you," he said, echoing what he had said the night he had killed everyone else. Reed didn't know how long ago that had been, now.

"Why not?" He demanded, sitting up. Anger he thought he'd forgotten burbled and bubbled up in his chest, and he was sure that the faint glowing green in his own eyes was brightening in response. "Why didn't you want to kill us?! You killed Doctor Storm! He thought of you as a _son_!"

"He was human." Victor said, as though that explained everything.

"And I'm not?!" Reed roared.

"No." He never blinked, not anymore, it made it harder to read his emotions than it used to. Victor's eyelids had always gotten heavy, his eyes narrow when he was truly furious, like he was considering how to slaughter the cause of his angst. "You were not."

Reed reeled back from him, hugging his arms to his chest, trembling in a barely suppressed rage. "And what is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Humans had their chance. They had their world. They destroyed it. All I did, in the end, was recycle it." Victor reached forward, and Reed jumped when the other's metal fingers touched his jaw. Despite the other flinching away, Victor just kept his fingers firm but gentle on his jaw as he turned Reed's head to face him again. "I used the energy that was wasted on the old world to help make a new one. With the help of the light, I created. A new world."

"All I see is a _cave_ ," Reed snapped, bitterly.

"Soon." There was a faint warmth to Victor's voice. "But first, I need your help."

"Which is why I'm still alive, isn't it?" He murmured.

"One of the reasons," he agreed.

Reed swallowed, licking his lips with a suddenly dry tongue. It didn't help. "What do you need help with?"

"We have a new world, Reed." Victor said, eyes glowing softly green. "Growing. I can adapt life. I cannot create new life."

His brows furrowed. "You want me to create life."

Victor dipped his head in agreement.

Reed laughed, breathlessly. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not Dr. Frankenstein. And I have nothing to work with, here. How am I supposed to - "

"I have faith." Victor interrupted him, then dropped his hand. "I need your help."

 

\---

 

The mistake he had been making, Reed realized, finally, was assuming that he needed to create organic life.

The light was life, but it was inorganic.

It also, apparently, could not reproduce. It _was_ , it had always _been_ , as far as he understood the half formed almost thoughts that it drifted to him in his dreams. The light could not remember a time that it had not simply _been_ , and it could remember older than Reed was even sure time went.

But the light was finite. It had limits. So much of it had been invested into the project of keeping Victor alive, until only traces of it were left in other pockets of the world.

Victor had given Reed some of his own light. Their symbiote was the same, even if they were separate.

It was why Reed asked the light to tell Victor that he was pretty sure he'd figured it out.

He was sitting beside the crack when Victor seemed to suddenly bloom out of it, rising from the depths of the fissure in the rock. His unblinking face looked down at Reed, oddly patient, then he settled himself as he had, last time, cross legged and in front of Reed.

"I think I figured it out," he said, voice quiet. His voice echoed off of the walls of the cavern when he was loud, and that always seemed to drown out the soft hum of the light. Once, he'd talked loudly to himself to do exactly that. Now, it wasn't necessary. "I think I've figured out how to create life."

"Good," Victor said, his own voice low. "I suspected you could. How?"

"I want to see the others."

Victor tilted his head to the side. "You are bargaining with me?"

"Yes." Reed said, lifting his jaw, trying to sound confident.

Silence met that, long enough that Reed was beginning to wonder if he should just bolt for safety.

Then: "Very well."

 

\---

 

" _Reed_ ", Ben breathed, lumbering to his feet.

"Oh Ben," he darted forward, hesitating just short of throwing his arms around Ben. Maybe he didn't -

Massive, rock arms curled around him, and Ben curled around him, as though enfolding Reed into a smaller stone cave, close and warm. Reed's eyes cast soft glowing green lights against the other's stone chest, until he closed them, and just basked in the other's embrace.

"You look like him, now," Ben rumbled, voice as low as his gravel could get.

"The light," Reed agreed, then nodded, jerkily. "Yeah."

"You okay?"

He took a deep breath through his nose, considering the answer to that.

"Yeah."

 

\---

 

"Dude, you fugly," Johnny laughed, clapping Reed on the shoulder to apparently show him that he didn't actually mean it. It hurt, a sharp shot of pain that seemed to keep burning long after the other had pulled his burning hand away. "And naked. You forget to bring clothes with you when you went to Dimension X?"

"Dimension Zero," he corrected, automatically.

Johnny rolled flaming eyes, though Reed wasn't entirely sure how he knew that he had, when Johnny was entirely encased in flames. "Yeah, I know. Thanks. But seriously. You're green. Less Hulkish, though, more... fugly."

"You said that already," he smiled, despite himself.

"Yeah." He grinned, his mouth a bright flash of hotter white in his face, then his smile faded. Literally. "You seen Sue? Is she okay?"

Reed just shook his head. "I haven't."

"Well. If she isn't..."

"Yeah." He nodded.

 

——

 

"You too." Sue whispered.

Reed slowly settled himself in front of the other, crouching as he considered Sue. She leaned against the wall of her cave, arms crossed loosely over her stomach as she watched him. She still wore her environmental suit, but at the edges of its neck he could see just the edges of green glowing scars.

He nodded. "Yeah. Guess so."

"He's trying to create life," Sue said, letting out a huff of breath through her nose. "It's beautiful, in a terrifying sort of way. He's building up Zero like the phoenix in Earth's ashes. A utopia, without the problems we had back home. No humans to muck it up."

"We're not human anymore," he murmured, considering that.

"Something more," she agreed, closing her eyes, flickering out of his view. He thought, for just a moment, that he could see her in the light of his eyes, but then she was gone, and it was just an illusion.

 

\---

 

"Something can't come from nothing," Reed explained, sitting beside Victor as he tried to explain the diagram he had scratched into the wall. "All life needs something to bring it into... _life_."

"Looks like it was drawn by a child," Victor murmured, considering the wall.

"Yeah, well... this isn't exactly CAD," he grumbled. "We make do with what we have."

"It works," Victor agreed.

"Victor Von Doom agrees with me, someone alert the presses," Reed snorted.

"There are no more presses," he said, and Victor sounded remarkably pleased by this fact.

Sobering slightly, Reed cleared his throat, and motioned at the drawings again. "Either way. In order for this chain reaction to begin, we have to have a source of... of spark. Then the ability to incubate, then creation."

"That sounds like exactly what humans did, before," he grumbled softly.

"Similar," Reed agreed, shrugging one shoulder. "Not precisely the same. I can do it. If you want _life_ , on your planet... I can do it. I can start, anyway."

"What do you need?"

"Spark," he held his hand towards Victor. "Something to start it."

"Something of me." He cocked his head to the side.

"Something of you," Reed agreed.

Victor considered him for a long moment, and Reed waited, patiently, hand held out towards him. Finally, Victor lifted his hands, curling one around the other, then wrenched sharply to the left.

A moment later, he set his severed left pinky into Reed's open hand.

"Okay." He accepted it, and some distant part of Reed's mind reminded him that he ought to be recoiling in horror, but he didn't, because he was pretty sure that if he created life for Victor, if he did this and Victor had his new utopia, he was pretty sure that Victor would let them out of their caves, and they could walk the surface of Zero. Victor had bargained before, just for this. Surely he'd barter if offered the life he wanted.

Reed pressed his hand to his stomach, hesitated, then dug his fingers into the crack across his belly, the one that seemed to bisect his belly button. It hurt, it made him want to jerk his hand out of his own insides, but he had to get at the depth of the green light, had to get into the symbiote and its core, where it lived inside him.

The light flared.

"Yeah," he told it, and didn't care if Victor was listening. "You're going to create, for the first time. Create something new."

He could both feel and hear the pulse of the light, surging around him, louder than it had ever been before, and he figured it must be excited. _It just wants to make a difference,_ he thought, almost deliriously, as he reached inside himself, into the light that shared his body, and left Victor's finger inside.

The light took it, and he wasn't sure if the odd giddiness he felt was his own, or the light's.

 

\---

 

"Let me show you the world."

Reed might have laughed, might have made a joke about how this made him Jasmine to Victor's Aladdin, but there was genuine excitement shining in the other's eyes, so he just nodded, instead.

Zero was beautiful.

There was life, _everywhere_. Victor had said that he hadn't been able to create life, but that hadn't been entirely accurate. There was little lizard like creatures crawling on outcroppings of stone the same texture and colour and composition as them, and what looked like butterflies made of purely light fluttered around their heads as they walked through Victor's Eden.

Reed rested his palm on his stomach, which glowed green from within, all the time, now, and wondered if that made him Eve.

The trees were more stone than wood, and when Reed reached up to touch a leaf, they were made of light, too. Something about it just seemed fantastical and remarkable, like something from a fever dream. Almost fish swam past him, and he reached out, almost touching. They weren't scared of his touch. Had never learned to be fearful of humans.

Humanoids.

Victor was right, they _weren't_ human anymore.

"It's beautiful," he breathed.

"Yes." Victor agreed, watching Reed watch the world. "It is."

 

\---

 

Johnny swept through the sky, birds that seemed as made as fire as him sweeping along in his eddies, leaving long streamers of flame behind him. Below him, Sue sat in a tree, glowing flowers of light adorning her hair as she watched her brother, eyes and smile bright.

Beside Reed, Ben sighed softly, stone shoulders rising and falling.

"Something wrong?" Reed murmured.

"Besides there not being an Earth anymore?" Ben glanced at him. "Besides being in this world which... is strange and wonderful, and... it changes to match us. How does it do that?"

He shrugged, head resting on Ben's upper arm.

"Besides Victor being the Adam of this world?" He continued, as though Reed's non-answer didn't bother him. "Besides you being the mother of his kids?"

"I'm creating life." Reed answered, finally, closing his eyes as he just rested against the other's side. "Stop being jealous. I'll create life with you, next, if you'd like."

"Stop it," Ben grumbled.

"Sorry," he murmured.

 

\---

 

Reed wasn't sure he knew what he'd expected.

The tiny thing kicking and squalling in his arms wasn't quite it.

"This is the life you have created?" Victor asked, kneeling in front of Reed, head tilting to the side as he considered them both.

Green light dripped from his hands, sliding down his forearm only to drip off of his elbows, tapping down to the floor where it gathered in small puddles that crept slowly back to Reed, trying to reunite with its host. The little thing in his arms was coated in it, too, but when Reed reached up to brush it off, the little life didn't seem any different.

It looked human. Mostly. Two eyes, small button nose, one mouth that it opened and issued upset squalling sounds from. Two hands, two feet, pudgy torso, down of black hair on its little head.

But it had teeth, little sharp things like a shark's, made of what looked like metal, and it glowed from within, a green light that was so bright Reed could see it twisting and coalescing into almost shapes where a heart would be in the little thing's chest. Its eyes were green, glowing like Victor's did, like Sue's did, like Reed's did.

"It's the best I could do," Reed murmured, offering it to Victor, embarrassed by what he'd created.

Victor moved forward, quickly, then became awkward, like a physical stutter as he fumbled to slide his arms under Reed's, shifting the weight of the little creature from Reed to himself, finally rocking back on his heels, little life curled against his chest.

"I'm sorry," Reed whispered.

"It's perfect," Victor breathed, and though his face couldn't move, his eyes seemed to glow brighter.

 

\---

 

Then: “Can you make another?”

“Yeah, but about the genetic material…”

“I have nine more fingers.”

“Yeah. Let’s try to figure out something else. I don’t think you want your progeny breaking off their fingers every time they hope to procreate.”

“The human way won’t work.”

“I know. But it’s okay. We’re not human anyway.”

 


End file.
